Where to Now? Anti-capitalist protest - global and local

Debate on the effectiveness of the Black Bloc tactic could well go on forever. It is certainly hard to avoid the conclusion that anti-globalisation protests that avoid direct action will kill off the movement, or at least greatly reduce participation in it.

Where to Now? Anti-capitalist protest - global and local

Debate on the effectiveness of the Black Bloc tactic could well go
on forever. At the end of the day, in relation to the question of why
its effectiveness has waned somewhat, it is probably true to say that
both the original article by Ray Cunningham ( Red and Black
Revolution no. 6
'Bashing
the Black Bloc") and the article in this magazine (Red and Black
Revolution no. 7
'Has the
Black Bloc tactic reached the end of its usefulness?' by
Severino) have some of the answers.

What is not in dispute is the fact that the big 'set-piece'
anti-capitalist/ anti-globalisation demonstrations appear to be
becoming less effective and attracting less media coverage than
earlier demos such as Seattle, Prague and Genoa.

June 2002 saw one of these demonstrations - against the EU summit
in Seville, Spain. A general strike across the Spanish state on
Thursday 20th June was a resounding success. Posters, graffiti and
banners advertised the general strike in all the major towns and
cities. Even on the tourist coast most shops and restaurants closed.
Large demonstrations of 100,000 and more took place in many Spanish
cities, with the Seville demo attracting up to 100,000 participants
including a sizeable red and black contingent. Union figures
estimated support for the strike at 84%. All of the Spanish trade
unions, including the big reformist unions - the UGT which is linked
to the Socialist Party and the Communist Party dominated CCOO - put a
huge effort into building for the general strike.

The June EU summit planned to set up a Europe-wide anti-immigrant
police force - another brick in the wall of Fortress Europe. It
further aimed to continue the project of building Europe for the
bosses, a Europe where workers will be forced to compete in the 'race
for the bottom' and where power will be more and more centralised. An
additional item on the agenda of specific interest to Irish workers
was to find ways to force Irish voters to vote yes to the Nice
treaty, which had been rejected in a first referendum twelve months
previously.

Damp squib

Up to 100,000 people turned out in Seville on Saturday 22nd June
to demonstrate their opposition to this agenda and to further
globalisation of capital. Despite the size of the demonstration
however it turned out to be something of a damp squib, having been
planned from the start as entirely non-confrontational (the demo
actually taking place after the summit had concluded, thus ruling out
any possibility of a blockade). This was mainly due to the fact that
the protest was principally organised by the Socialist Party who are
actually in government in the Andalucia region of Spain, although
they are in opposition in Spain. From the start, the Socialist Party
made it clear that confrontation and direct action - in reality
anything which would make the demos effective - had no place in their
plans.

If you were to rely on the Irish media for your information you
would be forgiven for thinking that the Seville demonstration never
actually happened. (Indeed the demonstrations which had taken place
in Barcelona in March and had attracted an estimated 500,000
participants received just as little coverage in the mainstream
media.) In fact you could have been a delegate to the EU summit in
Seville and remained unaware that any protests took place. It was
surely a testament to their ineffectiveness that they passed by
relatively unnoticed outside of Seville.

Without doubt the reason for this lack of coverage was the absence
of any form of direct action on the protests and the fact that they
seemed to have reverted to the old-style stage-managed protests of
pre-Seattle days. The staging of the main demonstration after the EU
summit had already concluded showed that the organisers were actually
going out of their way to ensure that direct action aimed at
blockading the summit or at least making life slightly less
comfortable for the delegates, did not happen. While the protests can
be said to have had a degree of success in that the vast majority of
participants were members of the local working-class, the ritualistic
nonsense of staging demonstrations so far from the summit venue makes
it all seem something of a waste of time.

Serious questions

The fact that the protests 21 months earlier in Prague (against
the World Bank meeting, September 2000) had attracted less than 20%
of the numbers who protested in Seville and yet received far more
coverage - and led to much more debate in Ireland and elsewhere -
raises serious questions for the movement. For us in Ireland, these
questions must be answered in the context of preparing for the EU
summit due to take place here in 2004. In this regard, the domination
of the protest organisation in Seville by reformists is a major
problem (the effects of this are adequately dealt with in Severino's
article, even though it was written before Seville).

It is certainly hard to avoid the conclusion that
anti-globalisation protests that avoid direct action will kill off
the movement, or at least greatly reduce participation in it. The
severity of the state repression that took place at the Genoa
protests in 2001 succeeded in pushing large sections of the movement
onto the defensive, from the NGOs to the Trotskyists. After Genoa,
many of these groups dedicated acres of newsprint to not alone
distancing themselves from but also directly attacking 'direct
action' protestors from the Black Bloc to the White Overalls. Since
Genoa - both as a result of increased state repression and as a
result of these reformists 'taking over' the organisation of protests
- the protests that have taken place have adopted a passive,
nonconfrontational tone. The result has been that protests such as
those in Brussels and Seville have seemed to be merely token.

Direct Action

This is not to say that all that is needed is for every protest to
adopt Black Bloc or White Overall tactics. Indeed Genoa also
demonstrated that these tactics were no answer to the increased
militarised violence of the state. The Black Bloc's isolation from
the rest of the protestors in Genoa meant that in the aftermath many
protestors fell for the slander that it was entirely a state creation
intended to provide an excuse for the repression. This despite the
fact that the Italian police were to admit that they had infiltrated
every section of the demonstrators. Whether
Ray
Cunningham's article in R&BR6 or
Severino's
in this magazine has the correct analysis of why the Black Bloc was
so isolated in Genoa - or whether, as I suggested earlier, each of
them has part of the reason - is only important in so far as it helps
us to answer a much more important question: how do we win large
numbers of people away from the non-confrontational line of the
Trotskyists and the reformists? And in the first instance, how do we
win working-class people who are not currently part of the movement
over to becoming part of the anti-capitalist struggle?

The one lesson that can certainly be learnt from the success of
the anticapitalist demos to date has been that it is possible to
involve 'ordinary' working class people in coming out to participate
in them. It can certainly be argued that the principal thing which
has brought people out to demonstrate has been the feeling that the
demos have been effective, that they have involved a degree of
confrontation and direct action. Perhaps more importantly, the fact
that they haven't involved ritualistic wandering up and down through
city streets has given people a reason for taking part. Compare these
two figures, for example: in 1996, protests against the G7 Conference
in Lyons were attended by about 5,000 people, 4,000 of whom were
anarchists. In March 2002, 500,000 people - a very large majority of
whom were ordinary working class people from the city itself -
protested against the EU summit in Barcelona. This surely proves that
the anticapitalist movement has begun to attract huge numbers of
ordinary working class people. The principal reason why it has done
so can be put down to the change of tactics which emerged in Seattle
and Prague - direct action/confrontation has given people a feeling
of power and a belief that there is a reason for protesting.

The lesson of this is that if the protests revert to ritualistic
walking up and down, if they are seen to be something of a waste of
time, a lot of these people are likely to stay at home. The challenge
therefore is to find a way to keep people involved, to find a way in
which the tactics used are seen to be effective and therefore attract
the maximum number of people to participate in whatever protests are
held. Furthermore, it is necessary to look for ways to establish
structures which will allow for maximum participation in discussions
as to what these tactics should be.

In this context, it is clear that the most successful aspects of
demonstrations to date have been the use of direct action as in
Seattle and the breaking up of demonstrations into different zones as
happened in Prague and Quebec. This allowed people to participate at
the level with which they themselves felt comfortable - be that
direct confrontation, passive resistance, or participation in a
totally nonconfrontational way. This is what we must look to
replicate in future demonstrations if they are to be effective. As we
in Ireland look towards the
EU
summit here in 2004 this is our challenge.

In addition any protests organised here must have a definite focus
and an immediate aim or achievable objective. This might be to
blockade the summit venue, the delegates' hotels, their route from
the airport or whatever. In other words, something should be done to
disrupt the event in some way or at least make life more difficult
for those attending it.

Meaningful and Relevant

The breaking down of the isolation between 'the movement' and 'the
people' will require us to use all our abilities to communicate our
ideas, and to make these ideas meaningful and relevant to
working-class people's day-to-day lives and struggles. It means
explaining clearly and precisely the links between refuse charges,
privatisation, pollution in the form of incinerators and the agenda
of the EU bosses, for example. It means exposing the hypocrisy of a
system that wishes to dismantle all borders to the flow of money,
capital and business while at the same time making it ever more
difficult for people fleeing poverty and injustice to gain entry to
the 'developed world'.

What is needed is that the anti-capitalist movement takes
seriously the slogan 'Think Global, Act Local'. The tens of thousands
of people refusing to pay the double tax refuse charges can - if the
arguments are properly made - form the backbone of the
anti-capitalist movement. When the Euro Summit circus comes to Dublin
in 2004, these should be the people prominent in the protests. The
organisation for this must start now. The focus of that organisation
must be on using the opportunity to build a mass self-organised
anti-capitalist movement as well as getting the numbers out on the
actual protests.

From the outset there must be open and frank discussion and debate
about the type and form of protests which will be organised.
Anarchists and libertarians should argue against the 'one size fits
all' model being pushed by the Trotskyists and reformists, and which
would amount to little more than a parade up and down O'Connell
Street. Instead, as happened in Quebec and Prague, there should be
space created for a diversity of tactics with people being able to
choose an area that meets their need.

There is also a feature on the Dublin
Mayday 2004 summites and analysis of what happened at on
Anakismo.net

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The Libertarian Communist Group was formally launched at a meeting in North Wales on Saturday, November 8, 2014, the anniversary of the birth of Nestor Makhno, the famous Ukrainian anarchist. [Português] [Italiano]

The Workers Solidarity Movement had out conference last weekend at which many of the conclusions from the collections education and discussion process we have had over the last 2-3 years were formalised as policies.

There will be discussions, speakers from movements engaged in struggle, home and abroad. There will be books and stalls and much more. If you’ve been to one, then you know what I’m talking about, if you haven’t make sure you keep the date set aside, and we’ll be seeing you on the 12th of April.
Please mark your attendence on the main Facebook event for the bookfair and invite any friends you think should be interested. Publicity is one of the big costs of hosting it every year so you contribution in that way really helps.

The WSM had its Autumn national conference in Dublin on the 23rd November. National Conference is the ultimate decision making body in the WSM. It happens every six months usually over a day or two. As well as discussing motions time is also spent on discussing the past six months activity and prospects for the next period. Conference also hears reports of activity from all branches, officers and working groups. This covered areas like the Irish Anarchist Review, WSM Website, Dublin Anarchist Bookfair and our pro-choice and anti racist work.

We are pleased to announce our affiliation to the international anarchist communist co-operative project, Anarkismo. Our affiliation comes after months of discussion and clarification of Collective Action's political positions as well as the positions of constituent members of Anarkismo.

Liberty & Solidarity's 7th Biannual conference has taken the decision to disband the organisation. We are still proud of what Liberty & Solidarity has achieved and we hope to continue to work together towards shared goals, engaging with an ever broader range of trade unionists and community activists. Our project, the empowerment of working people within the workplace and society, remains the same.

Hundreds of people from all over Ireland are expected to attend the 7th annual Dublin Anarchist Bookfair which takes place in Liberty Hall, Dublin on Saturday 26th May. The Bookfair, organised by the Workers Solidarity Movement, will consist of a day of meetings, debates, discussions and films and will also host bookstalls and information stands from a large number of political organisations and campaigning groups.

Dublin has an influential anarchist group, the Workers Solidarity Movement. It co-ordinates involvement in local campaigns ('especifismo' social insertion) and distribute a free quarterly news-sheet of 6000+ copies. Glasgow lacks this, but is not lacking in serious community struggles or a need for closer and more structured involvement of anarchists and other socialists in those struggles.

Observant attendees of this year's anarchist bookfair may have noticed that Black Flag did not have a stall nor was a new issue out. Some speculation has been made on the libcom.org forums that it is no more. The truth is, perhaps. It depends on what happens next and whether people get involved.

Well, we stand not only for the destruction of Capitalism and all it’s attendant barbarity but, more importantly, for a society in which we experience both personal freedom and collective control over our workplaces and communities. A new society consciously created by all from the bottom up, one in which the flowering of personal expression and freedom takes place in ever more aspects of life.
This
article in Greek (Ellenika)

The Libertarian Communist Group was formally launched at a meeting in North Wales on Saturday, November 8, 2014, the anniversary of the birth of Nestor Makhno, the famous Ukrainian anarchist. [Português] [Italiano]

Liberty & Solidarity's 7th Biannual conference has taken the decision to disband the organisation. We are still proud of what Liberty & Solidarity has achieved and we hope to continue to work together towards shared goals, engaging with an ever broader range of trade unionists and community activists. Our project, the empowerment of working people within the workplace and society, remains the same.

Hundreds of people from all over Ireland are expected to attend the 7th annual Dublin Anarchist Bookfair which takes place in Liberty Hall, Dublin on Saturday 26th May. The Bookfair, organised by the Workers Solidarity Movement, will consist of a day of meetings, debates, discussions and films and will also host bookstalls and information stands from a large number of political organisations and campaigning groups.